Wings & Things Page 1

This turbocharger is off of an engine of the Collings Foundation B-17 "Nine 0 Nine".  (notice the cell phone for size relationship)

Did you ever wonder where you get a 56" main gear tire for a B-17?  Well I found the answer on the sticker on the inside of this tire.  The tire is a retread by the Bridgestone company.

This Jeep Willies with a .50 Cal on top looks right at home with the warbirds in New Smyrna.

This is an unusual restoration at  Aero Services.  It's an American Half-Track being restored to it's former glory for the upcoming July 4th parade in Daytona Beach.  This vehicle has 3/4 inch thick armor plating which proves to be a challenging restoration. 

The Colling's Foundation Half-track is on it's new tracks and starting to take form.  Very few people are interested in restoring one of these vehicles which are historically significant for their role in WWII. 

The bed, windshield, and grill are in place as progress on the Half-Track continues.

With the doors on the half-track is nearly assembled.  Some of the parts that still need to be restored or installed are the fenders, the access doors to the engine bay, and most importantly, the steerable gun turret in the bed. 

Work is almost finished on the Half Track.  Here you can see many of the external accessories that would've been fitted to the oringal has been added in the restoration.  All that is left to do is add the gun turret to the rear bed.  This will include four .50 caliber machine gun replicas that will provide a realistic sound coming from a sparkplug which ignites a charge of butane within the cylinders in the guns!

This gun turret is from a WWII Consolidated PBY 6 Canso amphibious aircraft.  Other variants were also known as the PBY Catalina.  The airplane was originally designed in the 1930's and was  a big, slow, twin-engine aircraft.  Pilots joked that the plane looked like Dumbo the flying elephant but any pilot shot down over water was glad to see this airplane swoop in for the rescue.  It served during the war as a shore patrol aircraft, search and rescue, and gained great fame for its outstanding accomplishments of what they called search and attack missions.  The search and attack was basically flying around with a load of bombs attached to the wing looking for enemy ships.  Then the airplanes would swoop down and drop their deadly payloads.  The legendary "Black Cats" fought in some of the worst conditions in an outdated airplane and they excelled in this role.    PBY crews were known to land under heavy fire and heavy seas to rescue a downed airmen and because of this many people owe thier life to this aircraft.  One of the most famous of these rescues is the tale of Medal of Honor winner Nate Gordon and the PBY he named "Arkansas Traveler".  Nate and his crew took the PBY back not once, not twice, not even three times, but four times in heavy fire to save downed airmen.  Read the story here:  http://www.pacificwrecks.com/people/veterans/gordon.html

This is the rear gun turret of the B-24 Liberator.  Unlike many of the bombers of the day this rear gun turret was completely encapsulated.  The B-17 and B-25 bombers had a tail that simply had a cutout where canvas was placed around mouted machine guns.  This gunnery turret was different.  The gunner would enter the back of this gunnery capsule where he could control left and right movement of the turret and the guns would move up or down independently of the turret.

Legal Disclaimer - Please Read

© Brian Whittingham 2004